The invention relates to apparatus which disintegrates waste paper, sorts it as to fiber size and length and recovers reusable pulp fibers. The invention is particularly useful in the manufacture of paper and cardboard.
It was previously customary to disintegrate waste paper by spinning it in a container, wherein the spinning impurities in particular were first removed. More recently, a screen has also been provided in the pulp disintegrating container. This cooperates with a pulp circulating member to first comminute the pieces of waste paper, and to remove the other coarse impurities, since substantially only fiber portions which were of some recovery value because of their size were passed through the screen. Further sorting and disintegration following the pulp disintegrator was provided by another pulp disintegrator, which was also equipped with a rotating disintegrating and circulating member. This performed another fine subdivision of the suspension into different streams of pulp, in accordance with different values of weight, area or volume.
The foregoing apparatus is relatively expensive, considering that further sorting devices are indispensable in the further course of the process.